CHAPTER-III

PRODUCT AND SERVICE

3.1 PRODUCT PRODUCED AND SERVICE OFFERED

The Communication Companies in India are on the ever-rising trend and there has
been a stupendous growth in this sector over the last decade. The telecommunication industry
in India is one of the rapidly growing industries in the world and has also developed the
second largest communication network.

3.1.1 BSNL

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is an Indian state-

owned telecommunications company headquartered in New Delhi. It was incorporated on 15
September 2000 and assumed the business of providing telecom services and network
management from the erstwhile Central Government Departments of Telecom Services (DTS)
and Telecom Operations (DTO) as of 1 October 2000 on a going-concern basis. It is
the largest provider of fixed telephony with more than 49% market share, and is the fourth
largest mobile telephony provider in India. BSNL is India's oldest communication service
provider and its history can be traced back to the British era. During the British era, the first
telegraph line, was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harcourt British East India
Company started using the telegraph in 1851 and till 1854 telegraph lines were laid across the
country. In 1854, the telegraph service was opened to the public and the first telegram was
sent from Mumbai to Pune. In 1885, the Indian Telegraph Act was passed by the British
Imperial Legislative Counsel. After the bifurcation of post and Telegraph department in 1980s,
the creation of Department of Telecom by 1990s eventually led to the emergence of the State-
owned telegraph and telephone company BSNL. BSNL then continued the telegraph services
in India until it shut down telegraph services completely on 15 July 2013.
3.1.2 MTNL

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is a state-owned telecommunications

service provider in the metro cities of Mumbai and New Delhi in India and in the island nation
of Mauritius in Africa. The company had a monopoly in Mumbai and New Delhi until 1992,
when the telecom sector was opened to other service providers. "Transparency makes us

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different" is the motto of the company. The Government of India currently holds 57% stock in
the company with the rest being held by public and institutional investors. The company's
shares are listed on Bombay Stock Exchange, Global depository receipts on London Stock
Exchange and American depository receipts on New York Stock Exchange. As of January
2019, it has 6.71 million subscribers.
3.1.3 Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited, also known as Airtel, is an Indian global telecommunications services

company based in Delhi, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, and also in
the Channel Islands. Airtel provides GSM, 3G, 4G LTE, 4G+ mobile services, fixed line broadband
and voice services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel had also rolled out
its VoLTE technology across all Indian telecom circles. It is the third largest mobile network operator
in India and the second largest mobile network operator in the world with over 293.79 million
subscribers. Airtel was named India's second most valuable brand in the first ever Brands ranking
by Millward Brown and WPP plc.

Airtel is credited with pioneering the business strategy of outsourcing all of its

business operations except marketing, sales and finance and building the 'minutes factory'
model of low cost and high volumes. The strategy has since been adopted by several
operators. Airtel's equipment is provided and maintained by Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia
Networks whereas IT support is provided by Amdocs. The transmission towers are maintained
by subsidiaries and joint venture companies of Bharti including Bharti Infratel and Indus
Towers in India. Ericsson agreed for the first time to be paid by the minute for installation and
maintenance of their equipment rather than being paid up front, which allowed Airtel to
provide low call rates of Rs.1 (1.4¢ US) minute.

3.1.4 Reliance Communications

Also known as RCOM was set up in 2004, with its head office in Navi
Mumbai. Reliance Communications as of now has more than 128 million users all across the
world. Reliance Communications was founded in India on 31 July 2002 as Reliance Info
COMM Limited with the introduction of its nationwide CDMA2000 service. It became
Reliance Communications Limited in 2006. The company introduced its GSM service in 2008.

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It began using MIMO technology in 2011 to improve the quality of its 3G service, providing a
data rate of up to 28 Mbit/s.

In the 2010 spectrum auction, Reliance obtained licenses for 3G spectrum in three

cities at a total licensing fee of Rs.58,642.9 million. The company reduced the price of its 3G
service by 61 percent in May 2012.

Reliance and Lenovo introduced their co-branded Android smartphones in India in

2013.

The company ended its CDMA operations in 2016, and migrated its subscribers to its
GSM and LTE networks by September the same year.

3.1.5 Vodafone Essar

Vodafone Essar was founded in 1994 with its head office at Mumbai. Vodafone
provides services to 23 telecom circles across India. Vodafone Group plc is a
British multinational telecommunications conglomerate with headquarters in London
and Newbury, Berkshire. It predominantly operates services in the regions
of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Among mobile operator groups globally, Vodafone
ranked 4th (behind China Mobile, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea) in the number of mobile
customers (313 million) as of 2018.

Vodafone owns and operates networks in 25 countries, and has partner networks in 47
further countries. Its Vodafone Global Enterprise division provides telecommunications and
IT services to corporate clients in 150 countries.

Vodafone has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of

the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalization of approximately £52.5 billion as of
10 February 2016, the eighth-largest of any company listed on the London Stock
Exchange. The company has a secondary listing on NASDAQ.

3.1.6 Tata Indicom

The Tata Teleservices was founded in 1996, with its headquarters in Navi Mumbai.

Tata Docomo was an Indian mobile network operator, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata
Teleservices in partnership with NTT Docomo of Japan. In October, 2017 Bharti

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Airtel announced merger deal with Tata Teleservices and acquisition of Tata Docomo. As of
21 July 2019, all Tata Docomo users are merged with Airtel network and provided with all the
Airtel services.

The consumer mobile businesses of Tata Docomo, Tata Teleservices (TTSL) and Tata

Teleservices Maharashtra Limited (TTML) have been merged into Bharti Airtel from 1 July
2019.

3.1.7 Idea Cellular

Idea Cellular was started in 1995, with its head office in Mumbai. It also provides 3G
services to its subscribers. Vodafone Idea Limited is an Indian telecom operator] with its
headquarter based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Vodafone Idea is a pan-India integrated GSM
operator offering 2G, 3G and 4G VoLTE mobile services under two brands
named Vodafone and Idea. Vodafone Idea also provides services including Mobile payments,
IoT, enterprise offerings and entertainment, accessible via both digital channels as well as on-
ground touch points, centers across the country. As of July 2019, Vodafone Idea has a
subscriber base of 380 million, making it the second largest mobile telecommunications
network in India and sixth largest mobile telecommunications network in the world. Vodafone
Idea has a broadband network of 340,000 sites, distribution reach of 1.7 million retail outlets.

On 31 August 2018, Vodafone India merged with Idea Cellular, and was renamed as
Vodafone Idea Limited. However, the merged entity continues using both the Idea and
Vodafone brand. Currently, the Vodafone Group holds a 45.1% stake in the combined entity,
the Aditya Birla Group holds 26% and the remaining shares will be held by the public. Kumar
Mangalam Birla heads the merged company as the Chairman and Balesh Sharma used to be
the CEO. After a plunge in share price of Vodafone Idea by 80% on NSE, Balesh Sharma
resigned citing personal reasons. Ravinder Takkar, Ex-CEO of Vodafone Romania and the key
deal negotiator from Vodafone has taken over the reigns as CEO

Wired telephony market shares as on 31 July 2019 :

   BSNL: 10.41 million (50.2%)
   Airtel: 4.3 million (20.8%)
   MTNL: 3.2 million (15.4%)

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    Tata Docomo: 1.81 million (8.7%)
   Reliance: 0.64 million (3.1%)
   Vodafone Idea: 0.36 million (1.7%)

3.2 RAW MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT USED:

Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications
equipment) is a hardware which is used for the purposes of telecommunications. Since the
1990s the boundary between telecoms equipment and IT hardware has become blurred as a
result of the growth of the internet and its increasing role in the transfer of telecoms data.

3.3 TYPES OF EQUIPMENTS:

Telecommunications equipment can be broadly broken down into the following categories:

 Public switching equipment

o Analogue switches

o Digital switches

 Voice over IP switches

 Transmission equipment

o Transmission lines

 Optical fiber

 Local loops

o Base transceiver stations

o Free-space optical communication

 Laser communication in space

o Multiplexers

o Communications satellites

 Customer premises equipment (CPE)

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 o Customer office terminal

o Private switches

o Local area networks (LANs)

o Modems

o Mobile phones

o Landline telephones

o Answering machines

o Teleprinters

o Fax machines

o Pagers

o Routers

o Wireless devices

3.4 LOGO

3.4.1 LOGO OF ALL MOBILE NETWORKS IN INDIA

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